On the radar: antennae twitching, the AR surveys the future of architecture and finds cause for optimism.

As last month's issue looked back over the last 25 years, so this issue looks forward to the near future under Paul Finch, the AR's new editor. As the tiller passes from one helmsman to the next, it seems an appropriate moment to take stock and see what might lie ahead. Crystal ball gazing can sometimes be a hazardous occupation, but donning our gypsy headscarves momentarily, this issue aims to be a realistic and optimistic survey of projects currently under development around the world. This is not fantasy architecture or a back catalogue of aborted projects--the expectation is that these schemes will be built at some stage, each, in its own way, a product of its time, yet also helping to shape the future of architecture and society.

Illuminating though they may be, such surveys are invariably subject to the prejudices and peccadilloes of their compilers--in this case the AR editors. However we hope that this issue will be savoured in the spirit in which is intended--not as an exhaustive catalogue raisonne of the current state of architecture, but as a kind of inspiring amuse bouche, to stimulate and tantalise the senses. Though we must admit to an inevitable (but critical) randomness of selection, it may help to give some notion of the processes of research and taxonomy. Some 100 or so practices were invited to send on-the-boards material for this issue, with the stipulation that projects had to be unbuilt, but viable. Some are on site, some are at the design development stage. From approximately 150 schemes, 55 finally made the cut. They span an impressive geographic range, from Iceland to Australia, Japan to Slovenia and an equally impressive diversity of type from a winery to a monastery, from a nursery school to the European Investment Bank. To give some order to such a overwhelming quantity of material, projects are divided into six sections: Culture, Work, Learning, Community, Travel and Dwelling. These are necessarily elastic categories, but as is the case with the AR's regular themed sections, they throw up some intriguing juxtapositions and variations.

Culture considers the buoyant industry of museum and gallery production, which adds a vital dimension to civic life. In the case of Barkow Leibinger's new cultural centre in Boblingen (p40) and Jakob MacFarlane's theatre in Saint Nazaire (p44, which reuses the shell of the city's former train station), there is also an emphasis on reconstituting fractured urban fabric and reusing old buildings. Work looks at how the workplace in its many forms is evolving, from Foreign Office's Technology Transfer Centre in Spain (p50) which continues the practice's explorations of the topographic qualities of architecture, to Richard Roger's winery (p53), also in Spain, a structurally expressive and environmentally aware response to the more physical challenges of winemaking and storage. Learning focuses on educational buildings, from Tezuka Architects' somewhat audacious Montessori nursery in Tokyo (p64) which transforms the school's roof into a huge open air classroom, to Eva Jiricna's library and conference centre for a new university in the Czech city of Zlin (p61). Making education accessible and effective is not only one of the great challenges of modern societies, it is also at the crux of their civilised development.

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Community spirit

Community is perhaps the most accommodating of the six sections, encompassing buildings such as law courts, hospitals, sports centres and churches. Morphosis's new law courts in Oregon (p68) reconsiders the relationship between citizens and government, and though Pierre Thibault's Cistercian monastery in Quebec (p77) is designed for a different kind of community, it makes rich, elemental connections between building, landscape and spirit. Travel looks at aspects of transport, including Future Systems' extraordinary collaboration with sculptor Anish Kapoor for the Naples metro system (p83). Finally, Dwelling examines residential work, from urban housing developments to the private house, which in the hands of architects such as Tadao Ando and UN Studio (both p88) is still a familiar testbed for experimentation.

To some extent, the idea of a Preview issue is really old wine in a new bottle. In the context of the AR, Preview was originally an annual and slightly solemn, navel-gazing fixture of the magazine that ran from 1954 until 1969. Every January, AR editors would scrutinise the drawing boards of the nation to see what they portended. The exercise was confined to British architects and, like a seismograph, charted the lurches and jolts of architectural production as it emerged from postwar austerity to embrace the brave new world of Modernism. The idea was taken up again on a regular basis in 1976, this time every two years until 1986, with guest editors, including Anthony McIntyre (1984) and Colin Davies (1986) commissioned to make some kind of sense of things. By the late '80s, as the UK languished both politically and architecturally, the biennial survey was dropped, perhaps as being too parochial in outlook for a more consciously international magazine.

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Looking back, readers can have fun spotting the rising stars--Foster's implausible conjuring with glazing and neoprene gaskets at the Sainsbury Centre (1978), Michael Hopkins doing a golf club pub in Milton Keynes (1982), Terry Farrell turning his hand to a suitably Po-Mo 'Pizza di Putney' (1984). But there are other more sobering indicators of the zeitgeist--a succession of imaginative Hampshire schools, the now defunct GLC Department of Architecture and Civic Design diligently trundling out its quota of new public buildings, the rise of High Tech, lots of public housing and British architects dipping their fingers in the relatively stable honeypot of the Middle East. By 1986, Zaha Hadid was gracing the cover with one of her remarkable Decon paintings, and techno-radicals Future Systems were also in the AR's sights with Project 124 solemnly entitled 'Peanut: kinetic living unit for two people'.

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Defining the issues

Yet despite vacillations of style and personality cults, some aspects and issues are still relevant--the role of patronage, the application of technology, social and environmental responsibility, regional identity, reconciling the local with the global, how to humanise the large scale. In the first Preview issue of 1954, J. M. Richards singled out the vast size of buildings as one of the most difficult problems modern architecture had to face. 'Failure to solve it', he wrote, 'threatens the whole position of architecture as a refining rather than a brutalising influence on our environment.' In 1986 Canary Wharf was at the supermodel stage and not much seemed to have changed in over 30 years.

This latest revival of the Preview concept is less nationally introspective, aiming to present a broader world view and hopefully causes for optimism, particularly when considering the work of a younger generation of practitioners, many of whom have been premiated in the AR's Emerging Architecture Awards programme. Architects such as Pierre Thibault (Canada), PLOT (Denmark), Tezuka Architects (Japan), Sean Godsell (Australia), Barkow Leibinger (Germany), Camenzind Evolution (Switzerland) and Ofis (Slovenia) show that architecture can indeed be a refining influence, capable of nurturing and civilising future generations. The projects in this issue sustain the hope of being able to create buildings that are not only sensuously and psychologically rewarding in themselves, but which also foster a sense of invention and authenticity. Now that they are on the radar, we aim to keep track of their progress.